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64th Congress \ SENATE ■[ I^octtment 

1st Session J I No. 545 



LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM 
AT HODGENVILLE, KY. 



ADDRESS 

DELIVERED ON THE 

OCCASION OF THE ACCEPTANCE OF 
A DEED OF GIFT TO THE NATION 
BY THE LINCOLN FARM ASSOCIATION 
OF THE LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM 
AT HODGENVILLE, KY. 

BY 

HON. JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS 

UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM MISSISSIPPI 



SEPTEMBER 4, 1916 



PRESENTED BY MR. FLETCHER 

SEPTEMBER 7, 1916. — Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1916 



.31. 
.UOIZ 



D. Of D. 
;CT 9 I9I6 



GIFT OF LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. 



ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM 

MISSISSIPPI. 



Mr. PREsroENT, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

The presentation and acceptance of this generous gift, which is 

I really made to the Nation and the people of the United States, whose 

* servants we all are — the President being Chief only — is fraught not 

only with memories but with meanings too many and too various for 

one man's expression. 

Abraham Lincoln was born in yonder Httle log cabin. He was not 
the first nor the only one of our great men to be thus humbly bom. 
He sprang from that poorer class of southern white people whence 
sprang also Patrick Henry, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and so 
many others whose names illustrate on the pages of our history the 
fact that those of humblest origm in a free democracy of equal oppor- 
tunities can and often do reach the very highest station. 

Lmcohi was not ''the first American," as has been said of him. 
There were preceding him, even in the presidential chair, others who 
were not colonials of any European people, but thoroughly and 
altogether American — typical Americans, each in his own way. 

He was more than ''the first American," however. He was one 
of the greatest Americans. The tide of time, which has buried 
animosities and prejudices, has left every reflecting and just mind 
free, and yet compelled, to draw that conclusion. He was great, not 
in the way that Alexander of Macedon or Napoleon of Corsica was, 
but in a better way. His was not the greatness of genius, nearly 
always selfish. His was the greatness of common sense and tenderness. 
It consisted fmidamentally in intellectual and moral humility and 
; in intellectual and moral integrity, which salient characteristics 
•;^ enabled him to furnish to the world a spectacle scarcely if ever 
excelled of self-subordination to the interests, the welfare, the unity 
of the Republic; and, more characteristically perhaps yet, of self- 
surrender to an enlightened public opinion, the growth of which he 
shared and studied, the tendency of which he cautiously and wisely 
guided, and the consummation "of which into deed he at the right 
moment effected. He never went so fast that the common sense 
and the common conscience of the common people could not keep 
measurably apace, nor did he ever go so si^wly that these left him 
stranded on the shore while they passed beyond him mider other 
and quicker and abler navigators. In other words, he was like aU 
the great human instrumentahties of Providence — a part and parcel 
of the growmg form and texture of the time, unconsciously following 
and consciously dii'ecting American public sentiment, as this came 



4 LINCOLISr BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. 

naturally or was forced by inevitable circumstances into existence. 
This enliglitened public opinion, for which he had "a decent respect," 
constituted then, as always, the only real controlling force and 
sovereign power in a coimtry whose people are free and self-governing. 

Horace Greeley once accused him of being an opportunist. So are 
and must be all real statesmen in free countiies. They weigh oppor- 
tunity and measure its strength; but they also help to create it and 
then seize tlie opportunity to effect the desired result. This is sagacity 
as contradistinguished from "smartness." They are opportunists, 
but they are more. 

Lincoln was in this and some other respects singularly hke that 
other great American, Thomas Jefferson. Both of them were ideal- 
ists in the closet and statesmen in office. There was no Hmit to the 
visions wliich either had of what Jefferson called "the indefinite per- 
fectibility of human nature," nor to their confidence in the progress 
and enhghtenment of man under rightly constituted popular gov- 
ernment, founded on an enlightened and educated pubhc opinion. 
Both were democrats and both beheved in the aristocracy of intelli- 
gence as the only aristocracy recognizable by freemen. Many 
dreams which either had have come true. Many more are yet in 
the womb of fate, certain later to come forth. Yet neither in office 
ever attempted to force upon the country any result for which a con- 
siderable and probably prevailmg pubhc opinion was not ready. 
They attempted to pluck, when in charge of the orchard, no fruit 
until the fruit was either ripe or ripening, and above all their purpose 
was not to kill or even harm the tree. Hence both are accused by 
men of httle minds of "inconsistency." It is to be noted, however, 
that neither ever really "deserted a principle or a friend," as Jeffer- 
son's daughter j^roudly said of her father. 

No two men who have figured conspicuously in molding the des- 
tinies of the EngUsh-speaking race ever equaled these two in their 
abiding, patient, and loving reHance upon the rectitude of the pur- 
poses of the people and in unswerving faith in the wisdom of their 
ultimate decision. Lincohi never tired of professing himself a dis- 
ciple of Jefferson. He went so far at one time as to say that the vital 
spirit — that is, the bhth principle — of American institutions was to 
be found in the Declaration of Independence and not in the Consti- 
tution of the United States. On no fundamentally great question did 
they ever materially differ, not even about slavery, not even about 
the relations which should exist between the two races m the event 
of negro emancipation. Between the two the chief difference was 
one of personal temperament; Lincohi, of the two, hved very much 
more within hhnself. He was, spiritually speaking, a lonesome 
man, sadly so, but throwmg about himself a veil of anecdote and 
humor — sometimes rough himior — which served as a shield to ward 
off mtrusion. Hidden behind this veil was not only serious but 
pathetic and nearly always sohtary thought. Hence that indescrib- 
able mixture of hiunor and pathos which we find in him, as in Shake- 
speare and Cervantes. 

Mr. Jefferson, on the contrary, was frequently witty, but had no 
sense of humor at aU,and seemed to take a sort of delight in letting 
all the world see every process of his thought, as though through a 
window glass. 



LIXCOLlSr BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. 5 

It is trite now to say that every man in this world is the product 
of two things — his heredity and his environment. Unhke plants 
and irrational creatures, however, man is not altogether the product 
of either or of both. While his environment makes him, he helps to 
make his environment — can even somewhat change it by conscious 
purpose. Moreover, while he can not repress, nor reverse, he may 
influence the tendencies of his heredity even. 

Lincoln's family we all know about. There was very little stimu- 
lating in its influence. It furnished rather a platform to rise from 
than a standard to live up to. ^ 

Likewise his early environment was, to say the least, discouraging; 
there was little in it to evoke ambition, or to encourage, "hoping 
through hope to reach the stars." 

But he rose from the platform; he reached the stars. 

Within almost modern big-gun shot distance from where we now 
stand Jefferson Davis was bom. 

Both of these men were "border State" men, Kentuckians; both 
of them came from pioneer ancestry who had fought for American 
freedom and had braved the dangers and endured the isolation of 
the wddemess. It is a curious reflection, though there be not time 
to indulge in it here and now, as to how far each of these men's 
future — ^his political philosophy, the sectional patriotism of each, 
his leaning to nationality on the one side or to State rights on the 
other — might have been altered, mayhap reversed, had Jefferson 
Davis's family moved him into Indiana and then into Illinois, and had 
Abraham Lincoln's family moved him first into Louisiana and then into 
Mississippi. However interesting that inquiry may be, the reverse 
occurred. Davis became a very extreme southerner; Lincoln never 
became a very extreme northerner. The men were very much un- 
like, and yetbothwere alike in possessing the cardinal human virtues — 
truthfulness, moral and intellectual honesty, courage, loyalty to ideals. 
There was, too, somewhat of inflexibility about both, though in one 
case the inflexibility, while knightly, was stern, logical, unyielding, 
unhumorous, and even proud; while in the other case it was modified 
by humility and a rich sense of humor, from which flowed that won- 
derful capacity for "making allowances," that broad knowledge of 
an opposite's way of looking at things, that sympathetic apprecia- 
tion of the moods and ways of thinking and the ways of feeling of 
the untaught and unenriched masses of mankind. 

With Davis there were no laughter-inciting "sidelights on himseK 
and others and their relations to one another" to relieve even 
temporarily the tension of a fixed and absorbing purpose. Lincoln 
was never without them. By being never without them he made 
lesser men, like Stanton, for example, " very impatient." 

Davis became the very type of the best plantation life of the extreme 
South. As a part and parcel of that life he consecrated himself to 
his section, whose very civilization and social order he thought to be 
menaced. Lincoln consecrated himseK to the Nation. Both endured 
nobly to the very end, each steadfastly "keeping the faith." 

Lincoln remained all his life a borderer. In his temperament he 
came very much nearer that of the southerner than that of the New 
Englander, or the New Yorker, or Pennsylvanian. No theory of any 
sort would ever have led him into that gross violation of common 



6 LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. 

sense and common iustice which after the war brought about the 
grotesque though cruel saturnaha of the southern reconstruction 
governments ; nor could any theory, or any war experience, however 
bitter, have brought him to a hatred for. the southern white people, 
even of the slave-holding class. He lived with none ; he died without 
any. 

He was a great nationalist, not only in political vision but in this, 
that he knew and loved the people of both sections. He was per- 
haps the most thoroughly nationalistic and the least sectionalistic of 
all our Presidents, not even excepting George Washington, who 
never forgot that he was " a Virginian and a Gentleman." Hence it is 
peculiarly appropriate that the legal title to Mr. Lincoln's birthplace 
should rest in the Nation itself. 

It may be sadly recorded that while he understood the men of both 
sections, it is doubtful if any very large percentage of those of either 
ever understood him until long after he was dead. Jefferson Davis 
understood him partiially; understood fully his utter lack of malice. 
Witness the superb reply of the chief of the fallen Confederacy when, 
his attention having been called to President Johnson's proclamation 
containing the insinuation that he (Davis) had been complicite to the 
assassination of Mr. Lincoln, he replied: "There is one man in the 
United States, at any rate, who knows that to be a falsehood. That 
is the man who 5vrote it. He knows that I would infinitely rather 
have Lincohi than to have him in the White House." Davis after- 
wards said: " Next to the loss of the cause itself, the death of Mr. Lin- 
coln was the greatest calamity that ever befell the South." 

Shakespeare, whose writings Mr. Lincoln read and loved so much, 
helped to mold his thought. The broad and sympathetic charity 
with which he viewed and sometimes laughed at all men and women — 
the wise and the foolish, the just and the unjust, the learned and the 
ignorant, the sinners whom Christ came to save and the righteous 
who ''needed not a physician" — ^was almost Shakespearean, leaving 
anger against those who might or might not deserve it to God 
who knew, repeating sincerely, as he did in one of his inaugural 
addresses, ''But let us not judge lest we be judged." I think he ab- 
sorbed from Shakespeare the characteristic breadth in expressing 
thought which led to this, that so many utterances of his are not con- 
fined in their applicability to the time or the place where they were 
made, but expand in appositenoss to many places and many times. 
Even when arguing a concrete institution like slavery his language 
was universal rather than particular. His English was terse, forcible, 
Saxon. His Gettysburg speech is the most eloquent illustration of 
these qualities — verily multum in parvo. It is by all odds the greatest 
short speech in the English, or, for aught I know, in any language. 
To illustrate the breadth of applicability of that wonderful dedication 
speech, one might paraphrase it, with slight omission and no material 
addition, so as to make Mr. Lincoln himself, who was a great orator — 
because he was a man of eloquent thought^dedicate to the Nation 
that he loved so well the home in which he was born so humbly. 

Would there, for example, be anything inapposite for the purposes 
of this occasion m the use of these words : "Seven score years ago our 
fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in 
liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 



LIISrCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. 7 

equal. Now we are engaged in * * * testing whether that 
nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 
* * * We have come to dedicate to the Nation the birthplace of 
him who gave his life that that nation might live." 

"But in a larger sense we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, 
we can not hallow, this gromid." The brave and patient man who 
was born here, by his life and death, ''has consecrated it far above 
our poor power to add or to detract." "The world will little note, 
norlongrememberwhat we say here, but it can never forget * * * 
what he did." "It is for us, the livmg, rather to be dedicated to 
the great task remaming before us * * * that from the 
memory of" this "honored dead we take increased devotion to that 
cause for which" he "gave the last measure of devotion; and that we 
here highly resolve that" he "shall not have Hved nor died m vain; 
that this Nation under God shall have" daily "a new birth of free- 
dom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the peo- 
ple shall not perish from the earth." 

Suppose that in analyzing the character and results to the two 
sections of the late War between the States I, the son of a Con- 
federate soldier, who died in the cause, were to use this language, 
which is to be found in Mr. Lincoln's second inaugural address, would 
it not be a fitting comment even for this day and place? "Each 
looked for an easier triumph and a result less fuiT^amental and as- 
tounding. Both read the same Bible and prayed to the same God, 
and each invoked His aid against the other. * * * The prayers 
of both could not be answered — that of neither has been answered 
fully. The Almighty had his own purposes." 

Again, what a fine exhortation to renewed love between the reunited 
sections of these once dismiited States would not this language be- even 
now: " With mahce toward none ; with charity for aU; with firmness 
in the right, as God gives" each "to see the right, let us strive on to 
finish the work we are in " (and having already "bound up the Nation's 
wounds") "do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting 
peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

My f eUow citizens ! We call one another f eUow citizens now from 
Maine to Florida and even "where Oregon roUs." We are fellow 
citizens now and this "indissoluble Union of indestructible States" 
which all of us to-day so intensely love has been reestabhshed only 
because, as Lincohi said, "God had purposes #f His own," "The 
stars in their course fought against" the South as they fought of old 
"against Sisera." 

Yet again, pursuing my illustration, all reahze the present appli- 
cability, with slight verbal alterations, of what Mr. Lincoln said in 
his first inaugural address : 

"Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove 
our separate sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall 
between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out 
of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; hut the different 
'parts of our country can not do this. 

******* 

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must- not be enemies. 
Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of 
affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every 



8 LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVILLE, KY. 

battle field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, 
all over this broad land," once more "swell the chorus of the Union," 
as they forever shall ''when * * * touched, as surely they will 
be, by the better angels of our nature." 

" The mystic chords of memory!" What a world of potency there 
is in a phrase. These "mystic chords of memory" are the richest 
heritage and possession of any great people. Tlie music which is 
made upon them is sad; but it is embraving; it "holds the heart up 
higher." It is music in memoriam of "the generous and patriotic 
spirits" of a country; of "its buried warlike and its wise." It is 
always well then, by monument and memorial, to keep all worthy 
memories fresh in the minds of the people, thus inducing each gen- 
eration to rethink, refeel, and relive that which was noblest and 
worthiest in the generations preceding it. Thus we shall have the 
Nation make of its foregone generations "steppmg stones of its dead 
self" wherefrom to rise "to higher things." 

o 



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